Yet another 'modern spoof' by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 'The Starving Games' has as its main focus of parody the 'Hunger Games' film. Alongside it, multiple references/spoofs of other hit films like 'The Avengers' or 'Expendables', or popular culture in general.

Friedberg and Seltzer have for very long tried to copy the parody style of David Zucker, with varying degrees of success: 'Scary Movie' was very good (though I believe that was more due to the other screenwriters involved, like the Wayans' brothers), as was 'Wrongfully Accused' to a lesser degree (though that was more due to Nielsen than their writing), but the rest of their works tend to range from regular to terrible; in fact, their more aimless, messy spoofs ('Epic Movie', 'Disaster Movie') are amongst the worst films I've ever seen.

'Starving Games' falls in the second category, with some genuinely funny moments (like the aforementioned 'Avengers' and 'Expendables' spoofs) but with a lot of bad ones (including, for example, the rather tasteless sex scene). Friedberg/Seltzer try so much to cram as many 'hip' references as possible, that by the end the final product is an unfunny, idiotic-looking mess. The fact no actor here managed to give a good comedic vibe, which could save some scenes (something Leslie Nielsen was very good at), makes this worse than it could have been; the actors don't even seem to try at all, and no one has any charisma (especially the main actress).

Unfortunately, while this is a slightly better attempt, It doesn't give me hope for their future career. The fact their comedies seem to keep having a degree of audience success means they will keep with this formula. Guess I will just have to learn to stop bothering with their films.

If you get all the references you're sure to get a chuckle or two. The lead actress looks startlingly like Jennifer Lawrence at times. There's a few good one liners.

"The Starving Games" is yet another film in the idiotic teenager parody genre. This overused genre consists of many movies currently on IMDB's Bottom 100 list....with the likes of "Disaster Movie" (#1), "Epic Movie" (#12), "Date Movie" (#24), "Scary Movie V" (#50), "Fifty Shades of Black" (#65) and "Extreme Movie" (#99). "The Starving Games", incidentally, is #44 on this infamous list of badness.

These films are all essentially the same...each one parodies dozens of different movies and rarely, mostly by mistake, they actually provide one or two laughs. But they also provide dozens and dozens of unfunny, crude and stupid 'laughs' that make you cringe. A few examples are names of characters...such as Hugh Janus and President Snowballs. And, as is true of the genre, plenty of fart, poop, wedgie and testicle 'jokes'. Intellectual fare, this sure isn't!

So is this worth seeing? No.